stokesley

Early life

Francis Stainthorp was born on 22nd August 1803 in Hutton Rudby in the old North Riding of Yorkshire. He was named after his father Francis Stainthorp (1765-1822); his mother was Francis’s second wife Hannah née Waring (1768-1836).1,2 The younger Francis was my great-great-great-great grandfather.

He was baptised at the parish church of All Saints on 4th November 1803, when he was two months old.2 His fourteen-month-old sister Hannah was christened on the same day. As well as Hannah, Francis had two older half-sisters, Margaret and Jane, from his father’s first marriage. Then after Hannah and Francis would come Mary and Ann. (Three other siblings died in infancy.)1

Last of all, Francis’s brother John Stainthorp was born in 1810 and baptised on 19th August that year.3 John and Francis both became hand-loom linen weavers like their father before them. At the time of their birth, Hutton Rudby was still dominated by the cottage weaving industry, and the brothers were doubtless among the one hundred and twenty-three weavers enumerated in Hutton in the 1831 census.4

Inheritance

When their father Francis Stainthorp senior died in 1822, he left a considerable amount of property to his widow and seven children: a house each for his older daughters Jane and Margaret; forty pounds apiece and all his remaining household goods to his other daughters Hannah, Mary and Ann. Francis and John inherited all of their father’s “…farming stock, Implements of Husbandry and stock in Trade…” (i.e. weaving), and no fewer than four additional houses, two acres of land, and an orchard in Hutton Rudby – with all the rents and profits going to their mother Hannah until she died or remarried.5,6

Francis’ and John’s half-sister Margaret died in February 1828 when she was only thirty-six. Francis Stainthorp was appointed as the joint administrator of her estate, along with her full-blood sister Jane.7

(Jane Stainthorp had married John Oates on 17th August 1827 at Rudby. Of the other sisters, Mary married Thomas Raney in 1826, Ann Thomas Robinson in ’27, and Hannah John Furness in ’28.)1,7

Like his father, the property Francis owned entitled him to vote in general elections, even prior to the wider suffrage which would shortly be introduced by the Great Reform Act.8

Marriage of Francis

Francis married Ann Seamer on 16th June 1829 at Rudby.9 He was twenty-five; Ann three years older. Ann was the daughter of William Seamer and Susannah (née Osbourne) and was born in the parish of Ingleby Arncliffe, five miles from Hutton Rudby.10 Francis and Ann Stainthorp had three sons:

William (bapt. 11th April 1830 – died of consumption aged seventeen, 14th February 1848)11,12

Only the youngest, Charles, survived to have children of his own: his brothers both died of ‘consumption’ (i.e. tuberculosis), though William lived long enough to be recorded on his death certificate as a weaver in his own right.12 Around one in four deaths in England in the early 1800s have been attributed to TB.16

Francis’ and John’s mother Hannah also passed away in 1836, aged sixty-eight. She was buried with her husband in the churchyard of Rudby All Saints; there is a headstone.17

In 1840, Francis Stainthorp was one of sixteen Cleveland weavers who added their names to a letter submitted as part of a House of Lords inquiry into the hand-loom weaving industry, confirming that a man could earn, on average, 9s. 6d. a week from weaving, based on a twelve-hour working day.18

The censuses

From this point on it is possible to use census records to trace the Stainthorp family in Hutton Rudby. The first ‘modern’ census of UK households was taken on 6th June 1841. Although censuses had been taken every ten years since the passing of the Census Act 1800, these earlier, pre-1841 censuses were anonymous head-counts of residents and occupations and are not generally useful for family historians.

In 1841, Francis would have been thirty-seven years old but appears on the census as thirty-five (adults’ ages were rounded down to the nearest five years). His wife Ann was forty. Their two sons William and Charles were eleven and five respectively – their middle son Francis having died a year previously. Also living with them is John, aged twenty-five (i.e. twenty-nine). Both Francis’ and John’s occupations are recorded as “L[inen] Weaver“, and the whole family are living together at North End, Hutton.19

North End is probably the oldest part of the village of Hutton Rudby, and many of the village’s weavers lived in the cottages around the green.20

Marriage and death of John

John Stainthorp married Mary Bennison on 15th April 1850 at the parish church of St Peter and St Paul in the market town of Stokesley, four miles from Hutton Rudby. Mary, the daughter of Thomas Bennison, was born in the tiny village of Easby, just to the east of Stokesley.21 Mary and John had two sons:

By the 1851 census, Francis and Ann, by now aged forty-eight and fifty-one, were living alone in North End. (Their remaining son Charles was away as a farmer’s servant in nearby Normanby.)24 Brother John aged forty, his wife Mary aged thirty-four and their eleven-week old son Francis were right next door in North End; probably this was a pair of cottages which they had inherited from their father as tenants in common. Again both Francis’ and John’s occupations were recorded as “Hand Loom Weaver Linen“.25

John Stainthorp was just forty-seven years old when he died, on 30th April 1858, of typhoid fever.26 John’s brother Francis reported his death to the Stokesley registrar, and he was buried two days later.1

Map of Hutton Rudby showing North End and Goldie Hill. Ordnance Survey six-inch map of Yorkshire (sheet 28), 1856. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.

Later censuses

By 1861, Ann and Francis had left North End and moved a few hundred yards to South Side on the main street in Hutton, next door to the Primitive Methodist Chapel.27 The widowed Mary was still in North End, raising her eight- and ten-year-old sons on her income as a flax winder and charwoman (“chore-woman”, a jobbing maid or cleaner, and nothing to do with “char” being an Anglo-Indian word for tea!).28,29

Ten years later in the 1871 census, Ann and Francis were still by the Methodists’ Chapel on South Side, in a corner of the village which is still known as Goldie Hill.30 By now Mary in North End was also living alone; she is recorded on the census as a washerwoman.31

The last time they appear together is on the 1881 census. Ann and Francis are still on the main street at Goldie Hill. By now, at the age of seventy-seven, Francis had quit weaving (in fact, by now hand-loom weaving had all but quit Hutton Rudby…) and was recorded on the census as deriving income from his land.32 At sixty-three Mary was still working as a charwoman but by 1881 she had been rejoined in North End by her thirty-year-old son Francis—by now an ironstone miner—and his own wife and daughter.33

Deaths of Francis, Ann and Mary

Francis Stainthorp died on 14th August 1882 of bronchitis and general debility. He was seventy-eight years old.34 His widow Ann née Seamer followed five months later on 5th Feb 1883 aged eighty-two; her death was registered by their young granddaughter Maria.35 They were both buried at Rudby.1

Francis and Ann’s remaining son Charles Stainthorp (1835-1905) married twice and had eleven children. He was a butcher and farmer in Hutton Rudby before he left the North Riding and ended his days as a dairyman in Newcastle upon Tyne. Charles lived an eventful life and will be the subject of a future post. He was my great-great-great grandfather.

By 1891, Mary Stainthorp née Bennison was living with her younger son Robert and his family in Carlin How, near Saltburn on the Yorkshire coast.36 She died in the year 1900 at the age of eighty-two.37

Mary and John’s younger son Robert Stainthorp (1852-1937?) worked as a farm servant as a young man before marrying Mary Ann Dixon in 1881, settling down in Carlin How as a railway platelayer, and having seven children of his own (Tom, Maggie and Henry, plus four who died in childhood).38

Robert’s elder brother Francis Stainthorp (1851-1914) also worked as a farm servant, and later as an ironstone miner and blast-furnace labourer. He married Ann Parks in Skelton-in-Cleveland in June 1873, had two daughters (Annie Elizabeth and Mary Jane), and died in Middlesbrough on 24th February 1914.39

Sketch family tree showing the family of Francis and John Stainthorp in Hutton Rudby. Some dates of birth and death are unconfirmed. Image created using Family Echo software (www.familyecho.com).

References

Hutton Rudby and District Local History Society. Handwritten transcriptions from the registers of the parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entries for ‘Stainthorp’ and related spellings. Copy in the possession of Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com).

Diocese of York. Bishop’s transcripts. Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entry for the baptism of Francis Stainthorpe, 4th November 1803.

Diocese of York. Bishop’s transcripts. Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entry for the baptism of John Stainthorpe, 19th August 1810.

Hastings, Robert P. Hutton Rudby: industrial village (c.1700-1900). Hutton Rudby and District Local History Society, 1979.

The copy of the lists of persons entitled to vote in the election of two Knights of the Shire for the North-Riding of the County of York, in respect of property situate within the several and respective parishes, townships and places, within mentioned, in the Division or Wapentake of Langbaurgh-West… etc. Northallerton: E. Langdale, 1834. Ancestry Library Edition. http://interactive.ancestrylibrary.com/2410/32969_605905_2052-00053/ (accessed 7th November 2014).

Diocese of York. Bishop’s transcripts. Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entry for the marriage of Francis Stainthorpe and Ann Seamer, 16th June 1829.

Parish of Ingleby Arncliffe. Parish register. Entry for the baptism of Ann Seamer, 16th March 1800.

Diocese of York. Bishop’s transcripts. Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entry for the baptism of William Stainthorp, 11th April 1830.